Homer's Ithaca may be an island no more

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A GREAT mystery of the ancient world  the location of
Homer's Ithaca, the home island of Odysseus  may have been
solved.

If it has  the claim has yet to be substantiated by
archaeological evidence  it will be the greatest classical
discovery since Heinrich Schliemann found the site of Troy in
Turkey in the 1870s.

It might also establish that the wandering Odysseus was a real
person  not just a poetic and mythical figment of Homer's
imagination. And it raises the tantalising possibility of finding
Odysseus' palace, and perhaps his gold.

British businessman Robert Bittlestone, 53, got an idea about
Ithaca in 1997, and has since devoted his spare time to proving
that a peninsula on the western side of the Ionian island of
Cephalonia was once a separate island  and Odysseus'
Ithaca.

Ithaki, just to the east of Cephalonia and long assumed to be
the mythological Ithaca, is a complicating factor.

Homer's two great epic poems, The Iliad and The
Odyssey, tell of the Trojan War in the 13th century BC and of
Odysseus' 10 years of adventures on his journey home to Ithaca. The
poet's best clues to the whereabouts and topography of Ithaca are
in lines from The Odyssey:

Around are many islands, close to each other,
Doulichion and Same and wooded Zacynthos.
Ithaca itself lies low, furthest to sea
Towards dusk (west); the rest, apart, face dawn and sun
(east).

Homer, who composed his poems about 500 years after the Trojan
War, thus placed his Ithaca to the west of Same (modern-day
Cephalonia), not to the east where sits the not-at-all-flat Ithaki.
The island that still bears the name Zacynthos lies well to
Cephalonia's south.

Mr Bittlestone says that, while holidaying in the area, he got
the idea that Cephalonia was once two islands, with the western
Paliki peninsula, which is low-lying, separated from the bulk of
Cephalonia by a stretch of water only a few hundred metres
wide.

He believes that what is a peninsula today is the fabled Ithaca,
and that Ithaki is Homer's Doulichion.

Mr Bittlestone enlisted the support of two British academics,
James Diggle, professor of Greek and Latin at Cambridge University,
and John Underhill, professor of stratiography at the University of
Edinburgh.

Both say they have found plenty of evidence to support Mr
Bittlestone's claims and nothing to contradict them.

In Odysseus Unbound, to be published soon by Cambridge
University Press, Professor Underhill says he has found substantial
evidence that rock falls and rises in land levels, probably caused
by earthquakes, may have filled in the narrow strait between
Cephalonia and Ithaca.

Professor Diggle says that up to 70 topographical features on
Paliki are similar to how Homer described them. All three say they
have a hill in mind that could be the site of Odysseus' palace. Mr
Bittlestone says: "What has flabbergasted me is that if you take a
literal interpretation of The Odyssey you find that it fits
Paliki like a glove."

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1127804697020-theage.com.auhttp://www.theage.com.au/news/world/homers-ithaca-may-be-an-island-no-more/2005/10/01/1127804697020.htmltheage.com.auTelegraph2005-10-02Homer's Ithaca may be an island no moreNigel Reynolds<br />LondonWorldhttp://www.theage.com.au/ffximage/2005/10/01/ithaca_narrowweb__200x191.jpg